#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Summer collage

. . . the colors outside are perfect--

orange geranium, blue lobelia.

I wander from room to room

like a man in a museum:

wife, children, books, flowers,

melon. Such still air. Soon

the mid-morning breeze will float in

like tepid water, then hot.

How do I start this day,

I who am unsure

of how my life has happened

or how to proceed

amid this warm and steady sweetness?

~ Excerpt from “August Morning,” by Albert Garcia

I am woken by a kiss at 6:30 a.m. and it isn’t Frank. A little person has arrived in my room. It is a sunny and cool day. Rain at night and the plants are happy and we get to enjoy sun. I have a wonderful swim at Farm Pond. The geese have not yet really taken over. The water was so nice and cool. Then I work in the garden all morning. Frank is working outside too. I get all of the juniper in, and the last hydrangea and I weed weed weed and water. In the afternoon I go to the pond with Wave and both my daughters, Since I have had my swim I want to make sure they get theirs, so I swim with Wave while they do their open swim together. He is swimming so well, using his freestyle. We have a lot of fun. I have worked on poems today. Fussed with the new poem I like a lot and continued drafting a new one. A summer weekend evening at home with family and food and Wave is happy and also tired and asleep early. His mother has such good instincts. We had planned to take him in the North End, but she knew he was too tired. It was the right call. He didn’t like it, and resisted it, and then accepted it, and was quite cheerful and funny at dinner eating his shrimp and his mussels and garlic bread.